Rêves de L'Ambre
by baobabs
Summary: "I was pretty sure I'd lost it by now, because dead people weren't supposed to be playing Go Fish in my living room." AU.
1. I: Prelude

**Author's Note: Hi guys. This is a multi-chapter fic – I hope – based on Mitch Albom's **_**For One More Day**_**. AU, so there aren't any superheroes or anything and Speedy only exists as Roy Harper. Everyone's background is about the same as in canon, only without the whole superpowers thing, and Wally lives with his uncle while Roy lives with Ollie Queen (Green Arrow) and Dick Grayson with Bruce Wayne (Batman). Oh, and Roy's an alcoholic, not a druggie, simply because I'm not sure I can weave a high!Roy into the whole doom-and-gloom atmosphere. =] I also made Connor Hawke the adopted son of Ollie Queen instead so it would fit into the plotline better. Hope you enjoy! **

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><p><strong>I: Prélude<strong>

_A mountain collapsed before my eyes _

_and disappeared beneath my feet._

_-__Life of Pi, by Yann Martel_

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><p>Let me guess. You want to know why I tried to kill myself.<p>

You want to know how I survived. You want to know how I went from a 4-point average student at law school to a forgotten alcholic without a job. But first, why I tried to kill myself, right?

It's okay. I don't mind. People do that. Measure themselves to me, I mean. It's like I'm the line dividing the two halves, between life and death. Between sanity and madness. If you don't cross the line, you're safe. You'd never consider stepping in front of a bus or throwing yourself off a building – but if you do, you might. They figure that I crossed the line. And I don't blame them, not really. People look at me and say, Could I ever get as close as he did?

The truth is, there is no line. There's just you, your life, and what you choose to do with it. Mess up or succeed or do whatever damn thing – but in the end, it's all down to what you do, what you've done. Who is there to catch you when you fall.

Or who isn't.

**.**

I think I started to lose it when my little brothers died. They weren't really my brothers, not by blood – but God, we were closer than if we'd been real siblings. Sometimes, when our guardian weren't there, it would just be the three of us, doing whatever we wanted to do, breaking rules and getting into trouble and after everything being just as close as we were at the start. I was twelve, one was ten and the other was two years younger, and we hung out and laughed and talked together, firmly believing that nothing could shake our friendship.

Things like that don't last forever.

We started drifting apart when I entered university as a law student. Looking back, I was the one who left, not them. I was young and rebellious and got into law school on a scholarship, thinking that the present was all that mattered and everything would be fine as long as I graduated well. I threw my entire being into studying and it paid off, at least at school; I was the top of every class and scored near perfect marks on every test. I told myself that doing well in school was all that mattered and believed it, too; I believed it like a fool and lost everything as a result.

My brothers died on a wet November morning. I wasn't there when it happened, and I should've been. So I lied. That was a bad idea. A funeral is not a place for secrets. They held them together, two graves dug in the earth at the same time, two small gray markers placed in the ground engraved with fancy letters. I watched the dirt fall into their graves trying to convince myself that it wasn't my fault, and my girlfriend held me tightly and whispered, "I'm sorry you didn't get to see them one last time, Roy," and that did it. Because the fact was that I hadn't bothered to see them one more time, that I hadn't bothered to say goodbye – these thoughts crashed over me like a tidal wave as I broke down and knelt with tears dripping down my cheeks and water seeping into my shoes.

After the funeral, I returned to university. That was a mistake. I got drunk immediately after I got back, overslept, stumbled into third period with a hangover, tried to make a move on the teacher and got expelled as a result. And something changed.

You know how one day can completely bend your life? Yeah. I do. For what seemed like forever, my brothers had been there, sometimes irritating and frustrating but still laughing and cheerful and _alive_. Whenever I got dumped by a girl or hung up on booze to return at three in the morning with a pounding headache, they would be there for me, slightly teasing, slightly amused but always there to help me. When I started law school, I'd begun to wish they'd leave me alone, always thinking that they were a nuisance, an annoyance, and so I stopped answering their calls and told them to leave me alone.

But then they did. They died. No more visits, no more emails. And, almost unconsciously, I started to fall apart.

I moved back to the huge mansion of my guardian, spending the day looking for a job and the night getting drunk at bars. My guardian and I locked horns constantly, so to speak, him yelling that I was throwing my life away and me screaming that it wasn't his business. My girlfriend visited me sometimes, bringing me to see a movie, eating at Italian restaurants; trying to bring me back to the present. I resented her attempts and made no effort to hide it. We fought more often and her visits grew shorted and less frequent. She left in tears more often than not and I almost always ended up at the bar giving myself a hangover from several bottles of beer. The problem was, we were both proud and it was hard for her to be in a relationship with a twenty-something year old jobless guy kicked out from university and living in the past. One night she and my guardian found me passed out on the floor cradling an old picture of my brothers and me laughing and splashing each other with water at the local swimming pool.

I left my family shortly thereafter – or they left me.

I am more shamed of that than I can say.

I moved to a small apartment. I grew resentful and distant. I didn't bother trying to contact my friends or family, and they didn't either. Frankly, I can't say I blame them. My brothers might have been able to get to me – they were always good at that – but they weren't there, and when you lose those dearest to you, it feels like you're going into every fight alone and without backup.

And one night, in November, I decided to kill myself.

Maybe you're surprised. Maybe you're thinking, a guy who did so well in university and had such great friends, surely he wouldn't sink this low? Maybe you're thinking that, well, at least he had the whole "dream come true" part.

You'd be wrong. All that happens when your dreams come true is the slow realization that they weren't what you'd expected.

And in the end, it won't save you.

**.**

What drove me to do it, what pushed me over the edge, was my guardian. Or more exactly, what he did.

He adopted a new son. He was called Connor Hawke. He was seventeen. He was "a wonderful person" and "a fantastic son."

I had never met him.

I only knew because of what it said on my guardian's letter.

_Oliver Queen is pleased to announce that he has accepted Connor Hawke as his adopted son and legal successor of his property…_

A perfect rectangle of white paper and words written in that achingly familiar scrawl, arriving at my apartment a few weeks after the event. Apparently, through my drinking, depression and currently jobless status, I was no longer good enough to appear as Oliver Queen's son. I was too much of an embarrassment. A nuisance. All I received was a picture of a tall, handsome seventeen year old with blond hair and tanned skin and an honest, open smile, showing unconsciously how much better he was than me.

My replacement.

And a glimpse of whom I'd once been.

I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to Roy Harper. Just Roy Harper. Not Roy Harper, son of Oliver Queen. Just Roy Harper.

I threw the letter and the photo aside and walked out into the rain.


	2. II: Commencement

**Because I forgot to do this last chapter…**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice. Or Mitch Albom's **_**For One More Day**_**, either. I think Mitch Albom does. I also don't own the phrase **_**blundering back to God. **_**That, I'm a bit ashamed to say, comes straight from the book. **

**And by the way, thanks to **Shizuku Tsukishima749 **for the review. You, my friend, are officially seven kinds of epic. =] And not just because he/she was the only reviewer. =P You have to check out his/her stories. They are simply amazing. **

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><p><strong>II: Commencement<strong>

_When he went blundering back to God, _  
><em>His songs half written, his work half done, <em>  
><em>Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod, <em>  
><em>What hills of peace or pain he won? <em>

_I hope God smiled and took his hand, _  
><em>And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! <em>  
><em>Life's book is hard to understand: <em>  
><em>Why couldst thou not remain at school?"<em>

_-Of One-Self Slain, by Charles Hanson Towne_

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><p><span>Commencement<span>

Normally, in the movies, when someone's about to die, there's always plenty of stormy black skies and pelting rain and thunder crashing in the background. In the more dramatic ones, there's violin music and drums and the crash of cymbals.

When I stepped onto the street, there was only a drizzle, and definitely no violins.

If I was bothered, I would've laughed at the irony.

There wasn't anybody outside, which in itself was a pretty rare occurrence. I never really admitted it to myself, but deep down, I was hoping that someone would rush outside and save the day, like Superman in the comics, or Batman or Wonder Woman or – or _someone_. I was hoping, just a little bit, that someone would come and stop me, that someone – _anyone_ – cared.

That was stupid. No one did. This was a big block with lots of people and lots of problems of its own, and it could care less about people like me. It would function fine without a single suicidal alcoholic. It should've been obvious from the start.

We all have dreams.

And they all fall apart.

**.**

Next, I called my guardian. I called from a pay phone. He was busy working, late into the night.

"Why?" I said when he answered.

"Roy?"

"Why?" I repeated. Days of resentment and anger, days of driving myself insane with doubt, and that's all that came out. One word.

"Roy –" His tone softened. "Roy, I –"

"I couldn't even meet him? You couldn't tell me in person? Was I too much of an embarrassment?"

"I thought – it would be safer –"

"Safer? _Safer_? You thought I was going to do something?"

"I don't –"

"You couldn't risk it, that was it, wasn't it? Couldn't afford to ruin your image, could you? The famous _Oliver Queen_ would _never_ have such a disappointment as his heir, right?"

"It's not –"

"I'm a monster now?"

"Stop it. Roy, stop it."

"Stop what, Ollie? Or should I say, _Mr. Queen_? Can't take the truth, can you?"

"Roy, _don't._ I had too. You have to understand. He's –"

"Better than me? Oh, that's it, isn't it. Just like that, I'm – _replaced_?"

"Look, Roy –"

"Save it for the press, Queen. I'm sure they'll be _delighted_ to find out what happened to Roy Harper."

"Roy – no, you don't understand, it's complicated – he needed –"

"Is there anyone else you'd like to tell me about? Anyone else you adopted and _didn't bother to tell me about_?"

"No, Roy, don't –"

"Forget it. I'm leaving."

I heard him exhale.

"Leaving where?" he said tiredly.

"You couldn't at least tell me yourself? You had to put it in a letter?"

A pause.

"There are times in life," he said eventually, "when there's nothing you can do to make things better. All you can do is make things worse. I'm sorry, Roy."

At that moment I felt lonelier than ever before, and that loneliness seemed to settle down in my chest and crush my breathing until I felt like I was being smothered. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything.

"It's all right," I whispered. "I'm sorry too. Goodbye, Ollie."

Another pause. "Leaving where?" he said.

I hung up.

**.**

And then, for the last time, I walked down the street and got drunk. I paid for a couple bottles with the rest of my cash and downed several pints at a place called Ted's Pub, where the customers were either guys like me or moon-faced teens trying to pretend they were older than they were.

_Drink up, kid, and then leave this place forever. Enjoy your time when your biggest worries were tests and grades, because growing up isn't as sweet as you make it out to be._

_Trust me._

_I know._

Later I went back to my apartment and drank some more. I knocked over furniture. I wrote on the walls. I think I tore the letter into a dozen pieces and threw them into the street, each fragment of paper fluttering down to the pavement like tiny white butterflies and soon turned into soggy grey flakes by the rain, lying on the sidewalk like so many bits of dreams.

**.**

Sometime in the middle of the night I stumbled outside, shoeless and with my jumper jammed lopsidedly on my torso. The smell of beer clung to my clothes and I stood in the middle of the rain, wishing, vainly perhaps, that it could wash away all my sins. The sky was gray and listless, and clumps of grass lay limply on the ground.

It was two hours to dawn when I lurched to the bus stop and bought a ticket for Lemony Beach, the summer house I used to spend my holidays at. I bought a one-way ticket. You don't need a round trip for a goodbye journey.

The driver looked at me strangely when I climbed on and opened his mouth as if to say something, and then closed it. What do you say to a suicidal alcoholic rambling around with no shoes and a half-on jumper?

The drive took thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of chugging sloppily along the wet concrete. I stared out the window, watching the grey landscape pass by. There was no sign of life save for the muted streetlights glowing yellow in the background, buildings just a few old blocks like a Lego stack, leaning tiredly on the ground.

There was a feeling of exhaustion in the air. It does that to you. Time, I mean. And life. Oh, once in a while, you see a few people who really shine and do something spectacular. But the majority of us spend our lives in a cocoon of sameness, every minute, every hour, every day. And some – some of us mess up, slip, make so many mistakes that we can't fix. I did. There's nothing I can do anymore. There's nothing anyone can do anymore.

Blundering back to God. Simple as that.

**Author's Note: Sorry for the short chapter. Next one will – hopefully – be longer. =P**


	3. III: La Danse Des Fous

**Author's Note: This chapter is dedicated to the amazing **Claire-Rae**,****whose kind review got me to update this thing. You rock, girl!**

**About Roy's bygone fetish for adventure books…I made that up. Yeah. And I realise that Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter were written (or at least concluded) quite a bit after Roy's childhood, but, well, I had to rearrange the timeline anyways, so…don't kill me?**

**Disclaimer: One day, I will own Young Justice. One day, I will write a best-selling book. That day is not today. **

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><p><strong>III: La Danse Des Fous<strong>

_There are always sides. _

_There is always a winner, and a loser. _

_For every person who gets, there's someone who must give._

_-My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult_

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><p>Most people wish that the last face they see will be that of a loved one, maybe their mother, or father, or sister, or brother. Some people do have that wish granted. And some people don't.<p>

Back when I was little, I went through a phase where I read nothing but adventure books. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl…I reveled in impossible plots, kickass heroes and, above all, happily ever after. Of course, there were also death scenes. No dramatic storyline could lack deaths. Sirius Black, Luke Castellan, Julius Root…oh, they were all heartbreaking and sad and all that, but as long as it was the good guys – or at least important ones – that died, it was always memorable and impressive and people were there to witness it. Whether it was friends or family, the death would always be remembered. Remembered, and honoured. The last faces they saw were always caring, always remembering, always someone they loved.

The last face I was sure I would see was the bus driver, a sallow Asian man with a moustache, staring at me like I was some kind of zoo exhibit and then shutting the doors behind me with a snap and driving away into the darkness.

_No longer one of the good guys._

_No longer important._

**.**

I walked along the beach, the wet sand cool between my toes. The sky was painted with streaks of pink as the sun slowly rose, stretching lazily over the horizon. I realized that people would soon be coming out.

I needed to get it done as soon as possible.

It was a big beach; thin, but long. It bent around a small, crooked hill, roughened and weathered by countless years of waves crashing down on rock, and when I rounded its base, I saw a creamy beach house sitting snugly on the pale sand. A winding staircase twisted around its walls and lead up four stories to a flat platform for stargazing built onto the roof, and a snug verandah settled itself in front of the house, scuffed and covered in sand from years of abandon. It looked exactly like a home out of a storybook; only in stories, this home would be filled with laughter and warmth and family, and there was nothing. Just the sound of the sea on the surf, wind beating down on wood, and lost fragments of dreams echoing in the lonely rooms.

I hesitated. Years of memories crashed down on me, of days of archery with my guardian, aiming at targets merely a speck in the distance; of picnics in the sand, picking seaweed out of the lemonade; of cool summer nights spent on the roof, searching the skies for the familiar constellations that were as much part of my world as school and training and ambition were – once were.

Laughter. Happiness. Dreams of forever and a day.

I fell to my knees and felt the moisture seep into my pants.

Years of resentment and anger, two deaths, one replacement, a life ruined; sometimes, it's not so much, what's the point? It's more like what's the difference?

In the distance, the crickets started chirping.

**.**

The walk to the house seemed like eternity. One foot in front of the other. Step by step. Feel the damp sand underneath your feet, 'cause you're never going to feel it again.

I got to the front door and slowly twisted the doorknob. The metal was cool and firm under my fingers, and it yielded easily. I pushed the door and stepped cautiously in.

The room had not been cleaned for years. Dust collected on every surface, and it had a feeling of coldness, of loneliness. It was hard to believe that the same room had once been filled with childish giggles and pranks.

Then again, several years ago, it would've been hard to believe that I would try to kill myself.

I walked slowly towards the staircase in one corner, stopping to touch another forgotten remainder of my lost innocence. A light brushing of fingertips against the rough wood of the table, hesitantly lingering on the granite kitchen counter; maybe remembering the summer salads and warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies that had once presided on the blue-gray surface. Was it possible to get it all back, I wondered?

I laughed bitterly. _No. Don't be so foolish._

_Lost dreams aren't going to come running back._

I climbed up the stairs and reached the platform. From the roof, I could see the waves crashing onto the strip of pale sand, frothing and churning with flecks of white foam. A memory came back to me, as faint and light as a spring breeze's gentle caress; I remembered paddling in the sea, skipping over the waves as they splashed onto the surf, and skimming flat, smooth pebbles over the water. The sight of it made me sad. What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked that it's hard to believe that you ever were a child?

The sky was lightening. The crickets grew louder. I had a sudden recollection of my guardian and I, standing at an awards ceremony, me proudly clutching a gold-plated science medal and flashing a wide-seven-year-old child's bright grin, him beaming at my excitement and affectionately ruffling my hair; an act I usually hated yet grudgingly accepted in the manner of those who love and are loved back. Then I had a vision of me, eyes wild, hair in disarray, wet and filthy and leering madly, bursting in just as my guardian accepted my replacement as his heir, everyone looking horrified, and my guardian most horrified of all.

I hung my head.

I would not be missed.

In one fluid movement, an echo of my former grace, I took a running step, grabbed the edge of the roof, and hurled myself over.

**.**

The rest I cannot explain. What I hit, how I survived, this I cannot tell you. All I recall is twisting and spinning and snapping and flipping and scraping and a final dull thud. All these scars I have? I figure they must have come from that. I felt like I was falling for a very long time.

When I opened my eyes, the sky was pale blue, a blue that I hadn't seen in ages. There were bits of loose rock all around me. Stones pressed sharply against my back. I could hear a seagull screeching, and an elegant figure soared over the sea, wings outstretched, strong, free.

I lifted my chin, and the house was still there. The beach. The sea. The curled up hill.

I was not dead. I was very much alive.

I had failed to kill myself. How pathetic was that?

I felt like lying there for eternity, juts listening to the sound of the waves, watching the clouds float sluggishly across the sky. Maybe, if I lay there long enough, I could stay like that forever. Because waking up would mean having to face my mistakes, and I wasn't sure I could do that.

"Got any sixes?"

"Go fish."

The voices drifted along the wind, and for a moment I wasn't sure if I'd really heard them or not.

"Sevens?"

"Hear it and weep, buddy."

"It's _read_ it and weep."

"Pfft, same thing."

Now I was sure I'd really heard them.

I struggled to my feet. I'd expected aches, pains; hell, I'd expected not being able to even move. But there was nothing. I felt fine.

Physically, anyways.

Slowly, I wandered on the beach. The tide had gone down, and I strayed towards the sea, wishing to feel the cool water around my feet once more.

"Aces?"

"Man, you are just getting desperate."

Again. Those voices.

I meandered along to the house, moving like a man in a dream. I felt the cool touch of the doorknob and thought, _this is real. I'm alive._

Was that supposed to make me happy?

The voices got louder. They were boyish voices, young and animated, and for a moment I felt a pang of jealousy. It had been so long since I could speak like that…

I pushed the door open and turned the corner, stepping into the living room. My eyes immediately caught the smallest details: the small rip in the wallpaper, a Magic Marker stain on the couch…

And sitting on the floor, with a stack of cards between them, was my two younger brothers, who had been dead for exactly eight years.

**Author's Note: I'm not sure how I did with this chapter, and it was definitely the hardest to write, so…feedback is greatly loved. **


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